Electronic pricing systems are ubiquitous in the retail industry, as well as some wholesale industries. The advantages of electronic pricing systems are numerous: up-to-the minute inventory status and control, ability to monitor sales data (i.e., how “fast” a particular sales register operates, average dollar per transaction, etc.) and, as a result, decreasing inventory costs by purchasing replacement items only when absolutely necessary. As product is moved into a store, and then into warehouse storage, data can be accumulated (how much product received, where stored, date and time) and can be compared to sales data to see how product has “moved” from receiving to final purchase by a customer. These systems have revolutionized the retail industry, and hardly any store exists which does not use some of electronic pricing system.
An electronic price system used in retail establishments is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,149 (the '149 patent), issued to Crepeau et al., the system including a computer, point of sale terminals, and product code readers at the point of sale terminals including an electronic price display system. The display system has plural display units, with one display unit at each of the locations in the store where items are held for sale. The computer controls both the prices which are displayed by the display units and the prices which are charged to customers at the point of sale terminals. The display units are connected in an electrical series by data transmission line, and price information is transmitted by the computer over the transmission line to the display system in the same order as the display units are connected.
The '149 patent arranges the display units in a particular order. The computer shifts data out, to each display, which are connected in series. Data corresponding to the last display in line is sent first, data for the second to last display data is sent second, and so on. The '149 patent requires specialized software and hardware to use UPC data that is used in electronic cash registers. The '149 patent describes displays that are connected by data transmission lines only, i.e., that are hardwired.
An electronic price display system used in retail establishments is also described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,002,886 (the '886 patent), issued to Sundelin. The '886 patent describes an electronic price display unit, which can be remotely addressed and in which the price displayed can be remotely set. The device of the '886 patent attempts to ensure that the price displayed for an item is identical to the price actually charged for the item. The '886 patent requires special software to correlate the addresses of the display units and the types of items displayed nearby. Additionally, the '886 patent creates a unique hardware arrangement to use the specialized output of the special software to receive the correct information (i.e., if a different pricing protocol was used, the device of the '886 patent would not be able to function properly).
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the incorporation of electronic price display units in a system in which a computer supplies price information to one or more point-of-sale terminals.
With reference to FIG. 1, in which arrows indicate the direction of information flow, prices of items of merchandise for sale by a retail sales business are stored in the memory of a central computer 112. This computer may be linked to a master computer 106 when said retail sales business operates more than one store. The master computer, if existent, could be used to update price and other information. Otherwise, the central computer 112 would be used for this purpose. When an item is being sold, a product code reader 116, of which there may be more than one, is used to read and decode the product code 121 printed on said item. This decoded information is transmitted to an associated point-of-sale terminal 115, which transmits said information to the central computer 112. In response, the central computer transmits the price of said item to the point-of-sale terminal 115, which adds said price to an accumulating total of the prices of all items being sold in a particular transaction. The details of the process described above may be altered by distributing the circuit functions and interconnections differently, without altering the basic process.
One or more electronic price display units 117 are used in conjunction with the central computer 112 as follows. The internal address code of each price display unit is correlated in the store computer memory with the product code of the item or items whose price said price display unit is to display, where said product code 121 is the same product code read by the product code reader 116. Each price display unit 117 is placed adjacent to the display area of the item or items whose price it is to display. Each price display unit 117 is connected to the central computer 112, from which it receives electrically coded information. The means for connection of said price display unit 117 to said central computer 112 may comprise wires or other conductors, electromagnetic transmission and reception, acoustic transmission and reception, or any combination of such means. Connection to said central computer 112 shall be construed to include any interface or interfaces used. Shelf buses 119 are mounted on the edges of product display shelves. The electronic price display units 117 are connected to the shelf buses 119.
The correlation in the store computer memory between the address code of an electronic price display unit 117 and the product code of an associated item or items may be formed by visually reading the externally readable address code of said electronic price display unit 117 and reading said product code and by entering this information into said computer. This process would not have to be repeated until product display areas were rearranged.
Once the product codes 121 and display unit address codes have been correlated in the store computer memory, the current price of any item, and other relevant information, can be transmitted by the computer to any price display unit as electrically coded information. The source of displayed price information is thus the same as the source of the price information used by the point-of-sale terminals, thereby ensuring that the displayed price and the price charged are identical.
Electronic pricing systems are based on electronic scanners, or universal product code (UPC) readers. A UPC reader can “read” the universal product code (UPC) of a particular product viewed by the scanner. A UPC consists of a series of lines or “bars” of varying widths, which represents coded information. By “coded” it is meant that the different widths of the bars, and the spaces between them, have been specifically created to represent information (similarly to, for example, the dots and dashes of the morse code which represents letters and numbers). In this case, the encoded information is product information, including at least the manufacturer (e.g. “Campbell”), the product type (“instant soup mix”), and perhaps other information as well. All this information is included in an alpha-numeric code, which can then be used to ascertain the price of the product. This is done in the central computer 112, by means of a price look-up (PLU) table 124. PLU table 124 is simply a table, with all the product “names” (actually the alpha-numeric “words”) as one column, and the corresponding prices in the second column. Master computer 106 can also have a PLU, although it is shown as master PLU 126, because master computer 106 could service different retail establishments, each with different products sold.
A real time computer driven retail pricing display system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,880, (the '880 patent), issued to Gomersall et al. The '880 patent describes a computer driven informational display system which visually displays selected information in real time. The arrangement is particularly adapted for displaying pricing and other associated information in retail establishments which utilize a standard universal product code for the items of merchandise for sale. The particular bar code forms a unique address for respective remote display modules at selected locations throughout the store. A source of computer based information is applied to all of the remote display units in parallel. When a particular display module detects its unique address, the information to be displayed, which follows the address code, is processed and used to control the operation of an LCD display.
The chief feature of the '880 patent is that the displays are hardwired to the store base computer, which carries both power and data. Therefore, specialized hardware is required for the electronic displays. Additionally, special software is required to address the data. As described above, the unique addresses are in fact the UPC codes themselves. The UPC codes are then followed by the data, i.e., pricing information, which is sent to each particular display, depending on the product displayed there.
Thus, as described above there are particular problems in the prior art such as the use of specialized hardware, which is both costly to purchase, costly to maintain, and more importantly prone to failure which reduces the on-time performance and can result in loss of sales. Additionally, specialized software is required in all the foregoing prior art systems, again resulting in extensive modifications to existing electronic pricing systems, requiring additional expenditures of capital. These software systems are again prone to failure and cause existing systems to malfunction, which result in lost sales because of downtime. Also, some of the prior art systems require elaborate communication schemes, which require meticulous planning of electronic pricing displays, which, in a retail store establishment, is not conducive to creating a particular traffic flow of consumers in a manner most conducive for maximizing sales. None of these prior art systems discussed the ability for bidirectional communication ability, or the ability to display any information other than prices.
The presence of specialized electronic price display interface software at the heart of a store's price management system can be both non-robust and create a security risk unless the software is completely customized and tested for a particular system design. This makes the use of electronic pricing signs owned ny others than the retailer, such as branded consumer products manufacturers, prohibitively difficult and expensive to install and manage. Either the store must incorporate “foreign” software into the heart of it's pricing system or must create and manage a separate system for each manufacturer who would wish to electronically display an accurate price on manufacturer provided in-store merchandisers as are common in retail. As a result, the manufacturer's in-store merchandisers are normally provided with either hand-written prices or simple stick-on numbers for pricing, and expensive and difficult to maintain method which can lead to disparities between the posted price and the selling price as listed by the electronic cash register's price look-up system.
Thus, a genuine need has been shown and demonstrated for an electronic pricing display system, which does not require specialized hardware or software, which interacts within an existing electronic pricing display system seamlessly and without large expenditures of additional capital, and/or does not impose any changes or modifications to the existing system, wherein such a system will have the ability for bidirectional communication, the ability to display information other than price, and interact in a manner not affecting existing systems.